Hero Rescue Dog Detects Stranger’s Seizure at Shelter Event
Adoption days are a great way for people to find new pets and for shelter animals to find furever homes. That’s exactly what was expected to happen when a Campbell County shelter event in Virginia held an adoption day on June 8, 2025. But what happened that day was far from ordinary.
A former stray named Sienna was greeting people at the event, according to PEOPLE, when she detected something wasn’t right with one of the attendees. Although she was probably not a trained service dog, Sienna intuitively walked up to the man and stayed with him, putting her paw on his leg. Sienna was signaling that he was about to have a seizure. Her actions were truly heroic.
Hero Dog
The Campbell County Animal Control explained on Facebook that Sienna reacted and understood what was going on before it occurred. The post explained: “Sienna knew. Before any human saw the signs, she knew. She gently broke away and walked straight up to a man she had never met.”
The post continued, “She sat quietly at his feet, refused to budge, and softly placed her paw on his leg. It wasn’t a trick. It wasn’t prompted.”
A few moments later, the man’s wife, Kristen Davis, returned to his side and saw that there was a medical emergency unfolding. Her husband was already having a seizure or about to have one. Davis explained that her husband had been having myoclonic seizures that morning.
She quickly brought him to their car, turned on the air conditioning and gave him the care he needed, reported WDBJ7.
Davis explained that they already have three dogs at home but none of them are service dogs or can detect seizures. She said on Facebook that her family is not able to adopt a fourth, but she wants people to know how awesome Sienna is.
About Sienna
Barbe Shackleford, Director of Friends of Campbell County Animal Control told WDB17 that the shelter staff believes that Sienna is around four-or-five-years-old and that she has had multiple litters of puppies. Since Sienna was a stray that was found in downtown Altavista and never claimed, there is no way of knowing if she ever has seizure detection training.
“She’s totally house-trained, which is always amazing anyway, but we have no idea what her training was,” said Shackleford. “Somebody had taught her to sit, they had taught her to give a paw, and then to just sit there nicely. So maybe she had a background in it, we have no idea. I kind of doubt she did, or she wouldn’t be running loose.
For a stray dog just to show it out of the blue, I think that’s pretty amazing. I know there are dogs that go to training to learn to identify different odors and different electrical pulses in people, but I’ve never seen one do it innately.”
Since the publicity about Sienna’s heroic actions, people have donated to cover her adoption fee and to pay for necessary dental work.
Shackleford updated Goodnet and said that many people were interested in adopting Sienna and that her new family, who lives 50 miles away, recently came to the shelter to meet her. They adopted Sienna and she has not left their son’s side ever since. This tale about a four-legged hero has a tail wagging happy ending.
